Through the official Humboldt County grapevine, you may have heard about the unveiling of the New Business “Confidence” Report put on by the folks over at Prosperity this coming Friday.

This eye-opening report, and the new economic dashboard featured on the Prosperity website, are just the latest of the many pathetic attempts by local officials to pretend like they are doing something proactive about Humboldt’s faltering economy.

We will hold off on 100% completely ripping on this waste of time and money until after the report party has gone down. However, let’s talk about some of the really cool things that you can see on the new economic dashboard.

For example, lets see how many firms were created between 2004-2009 in the vaunted “Targets of Opportunity” category.

Gadzooks Humboldt, the floor is falling out from under us!

Hmm, net loss huh? Weird – somebody told us that Humboldt’s economy was doing really well. We, as you may have guessed, tend to disagree.

However, let’s put that aside. In fact, THC would like to give Prosperity! some credit. There are some useful tools on the website, and really great info (particularly for sickos like us who love to read about how frickin’ bad things are looking around here.)

Yep, you can probably even find something on the site that tells you wages have increased, and that’s sort of true. They just haven’t increased for average schmucks like us. Who keeps getting raises? Hmmm….Public sector administrators, anyone?

Anywho, having a nifty little economic tool online is great – just think about how many people will be rushing to create jobs and do business in Humboldt when we have such a sparkling track record for all to see. The numbers shown on Prosperity! really speak volumes, don’t you think?

Too bad nobody ever uses the site. Don’t pretend like you ever used it/heard of it before, you know you didn’t. And even Google agrees with us on this. Wanna know how we know?

Ouch! Sorry Prosperity, there’s a new head honcho in town! The Humboldt Consequential, ordained by Google as Humboldt’s foremost economic experts.

Now, we won’t see you on Friday at the Prosperity Reception as that would require us to leave mommy’s basement, but we would love to hear from you about how you feel about the event if you should happen to go.

But if you have any questions before you subject yourself to that kind of torture, you know who to ask: The Humboldt Consequential.

Hey, I thought of you guys (guys right?) this am when I re-read a great post on Trump by Kevin Drum. There was this nugget…

“I should add that this is entirely consistent with the notion that Trump’s strength comes fundamentally from his appeal to the conservative culture of grievance and resentment.”

Exaclty Kevin. “Conservative culture of grievance and resentment.” Government employees is the last polite refuge of this. I mean there are others that are familiar which you may find in the Thunderdome on LoCO, but for the common-man (mostly men), the last safe target is government – and I like how you made this even safer by targeting the administrators.

To be clear, I’m not here to fight for higher administrative salaries. What I am here to point out is this focus is a small yet integral part of the larger ideology that, oh, so ironically, has gotten us to this place in the first place.

Having said all that – cool links and info, thanks. We’ll just be disagreeing on solutions, but at least we agree on being informed.

This winter I attended an economic conference concerning the northern counties. There were many interesting speakers, One of the speakers had a presentation entitled rural counties and the global market.
There were reps. from many congressman and assembly members. There were even reps. from the city of Eureka. Guess who wasn’t there? Anyone one from the County of Humboldt.
It was embarrassing.

Prosperity schmosperity. That whole group only likes certain politically correct ‘entrepreneurs’. Good old fashioned hard working industry is not acceptable. Yes, we are a economically challenged area; just who do you think put us there????

If the same no-growthers keep the bay as a large shallow pond only for them to paddle around on without interruption from commerce, continue to want to make trails instead of rails, and stay out of the way if new industry or re-born industry comes into the area we be dead on the vine. They want us to go back to horse and buggies — and who do you think would be shoveling up the poop? Not them.

Time to pick up the pitch forks and take back our county and put these lazy over-entitled socialist slobs to physical hard labor with only bread and water.

I’m curious about who you think should pay for the rails you think might make us more competitive? Because I’m one person who doesn’t think pouring money into rails through rights-of-way that are not stable enough to support trains is a very good investment for our area, so I don’t want a bunch of politicians to waste my tax money on things like that, subsidizing some politically-connected biznismen, and getting elected on things that sound good but have zero chance of paying their costs back. The best thing about “rails not trails,” as far as I can tell, is that it fits on a bumper sticker and rhymes.

Boy Sammy you really have it down. You have convinced me, instead of looking forward and working for a better future for my kids and grand kids, I think I’ll just sit back and watch the Interstate trucks role across the newly rebuilt highway 299.
After all this is what Wilson, Marks, Dale, Newman, and Higgins have been working for.

Hey THC, you should check out the NCJ story on the Yurok’s getting bilked out of $250,000. Seems as though a Susan Masten was responsible for turning them on to a con man. I’m pretty sure this the same Susan Masten that was appointed to the Planning Commission by my Stupidvisor, Ryan Sundberg. It’s my understanding that she had the worst attendance record in the Commissions history and rarely did her homework for the Commission either. I have a friend in McKinleyville who had a couple projects before the Commission and said she was the most uninformed person he’s ever seen and that Sundberg should be embarrassed for appointing her. Figures that she’s in the middle of another fiasco.

Sue Masten would make a great subject for an article on the ineptitude of our appointed officials and the Stupidvisors who enable them..